WEBVTT

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this is a wireless keyboard right that's what it says on the website and on the

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box so then why does it have a wire hanging off of it oh for the battery you

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say oh well that explains it no that explains nothing it not only fails to

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eliminate a wire from my desk it costs more and it needs to be unplugged

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occasionally in order to keep the battery healthy calling this an

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improvement over a wired keyboard is an outright lie the most baffling part is

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that we live in a world that has Wireless power smartphones have had

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wireless charging for so long that even devices made in North Korea support it

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so what is preventing keyboard manufacturers from going true Wireless

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well as it turns out nothing for the price of this tiny waffle maker we can

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quickly and easily turn nearly any wireless keyboard into well and actually

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wireless keyboard why hasn't this become a standard what are the pitfalls and how

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can we avoid them and what are our different options to turn this keyboard

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from a lie into a good honest peripheral the answer to all three is after this

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message from our sponsor iFixit repair your own broken devices with iFixit to

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celebrate their 20th anniversary iFixit is giving out a free T-shirt with

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Wireless Power Solutions use electromagnetic induction which sounds

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fancy but the principle is fairly simple a moving magnet near a coil of wire will

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generate an electrical current in the aforementioned wire and conversely when

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an electric current passes through a coil it generates a magnetic field so by

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pulsing electricity through one coil you can create a pulsing or changing

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magnetic field so that when a second coil is placed near it it will generate

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an electrical current without a wire the double conversion means that

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wireless charging is not particularly efficient which limits your total power

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and compared to what you might see in the comic books magnetic force is only

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effective over relatively short distances but the good news is that the

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keyboard Community hasn't taken the NVIDIA approach to product design

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yet and with only a few exceptions people keep their keyboards planted

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fairly firmly on their desks desks that can be equipped with wireless power

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modules of course we need a way to receive said Wireless power enter this

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it cost us less than 15 bucks on Amazon and if we had the patience devices like

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it actually this seems to be the exact same one can be had for as little as two

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US Dollars on AliExpress it's a 5 watt

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receiver that is plenty for our keyboard and inside it will find an oblong coil a

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graphite pad to reflect the magnetic field back for a strong connection and a

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small circuit board this one is primarily marketed for old smartphones

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or those with broken QI charging systems but in practice it works to charge any 5

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volt type c device up to one amp other similar coils can do 2 amps or 10 watts

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and cost just a few dollars more and the upcoming G2 standard claims 15 watts

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will be the new maximum I'm ready for toaster keyboard uh sort of while this

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all in one sealed up solution is simple

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it does present some challenges what if your keyboard's charging port is in a

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place that makes it impractical to slide this underneath it what if your cable

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plugs in right above or beside the feet and you like typing at an angle or what

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if you just hate having a thin black white look what if you just hate having

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a thin black wire running down the side of your otherwise Sleek perfect

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mechanical input device thankfully there's no need to settle when you can

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meddle with a few simple solder joints you can attach there it is one of these

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directly to the USB port while hiding

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the entire solution neatly inside the case for your keyboard it's the same

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Electronics as that external one but without the type C connector the thin

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plastic casing and oh did I mention that they are even cheaper getting a keyboard

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open usually involves removing some or

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should be leaving these

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once all the screws are out opening the board should be as simple as popping the

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clips

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cool old spoiler movie Magic once you've got

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the board open it should reveal a small circuit board that the USB port attaches

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to and if you're really lucky at this stage you'll find test pads that are

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clearly labeled usually something like VCC v-bus or V plus and that would be

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for the positive connection sometimes though you'll be left guessing if you

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have to guess a multimeter and a type c to USB 2.0 type a cable that you don't

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use anymore will make quick work of things simply violently decapitate the

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type A end of the cable plug it in prod the positive pin and then use your other

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probe to poke at the test pads until you get that sweet sweet beep of continuity

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now at this stage deciding where to place the charging coil is going to be

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very dependent on your keyboard and on your personal preferences but one thing

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that you will need to keep in mind when weighing placement options is that you

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want the distance between your transmitter coil wherever that will be

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and your receiver coil which will be inside your keyboard to be as short as

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possible if you're planning to charge your keyboard wirelessly while you use

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it which I would strongly recommend because it's awesome it means you never

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have to think about it again the safest place to put this would be down near the

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space bar even with the feet of the keyboard up the wrist area is going to

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be designed to be as close to the desk as possible once you've got your coils

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new home picked out and your solder points mapped you just use some Captain

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tape to stick it down and solder it all together you may have to change the wire

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out by the way out of the box it's not very long but fun Tech tip if you don't

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have any spools of wire kicking around because you don't do this very often you

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can always Harvest some wire from that USB cable that you just ruined or from a

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Cat5e cable that's lying around with broken Clips or something like that then

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it should be as simple as putting it all back together and you should have

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yourself a truly wireless keyboard Let's

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test drive it right now I just need a way to get power

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to it ah yes this thing very cool uh how does it oh my God I

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have to screw it into the bottom of the table

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yep that's correct

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okay well

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rock on brother oh hey hey whoa what's

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that it's a doing or something

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I was about to say that I think maybe this wood or whatever just doesn't

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something anyway the point is my phone charges so that's not the problem let's

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take the keyboard back again

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oh it's working now I just can't move this hand or this keyboard at all you

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know what is the keyboard just charged

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that would explain why it pulses for a

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second and then it's like nope because

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it's charged

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but the next stage is to see if it will work through our Northern Lights desk

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pad I'll see you ready

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come on

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do the trick don't be cool

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we're so grounded we've got it

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it's working okay we can confirm by restarting it and should pulse

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I swear to God this is the right spot it doesn't matter The Savvy among you have

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probably noticed by now that our solution requires the keyboard to be

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placed pretty precisely for power and

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some keyboards use a metal chassis so QI charging wouldn't be an option for those

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at all that's what they want you to think there is a keyboard with wireless

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charging built in you can put it pretty much wherever you want on the

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accompanying desk mat and it's made of metal the angry Mouse cyberboard is

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built like a 1960s refrigerator but wait if we look at the bottom what's this A

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Plexiglas window with the charging coil in it crazy right but so is the price I

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mean it's a really cool solution the pad uses 15 coils to improve placement

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flexibility but by the times you've got the matching set keyboard and Pad you'll

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have spent nearly 1100 US Dollars and

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that's if you can even get your hands on them so that's not a real solution and

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even if they used a lower cost implementation like ours the power

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delivery side of things is going to turn off a lot of people the range of our

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qlabs uts-1 which is designed to go

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under the desk rather than only through a tiny thin pad is up to one inch

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allowing it to comfortably penetrate most desktops but as you guys already

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saw it can still be a little bit finicky for placement

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um I mean with the phone it's a little bit better I'm able to line it up pretty

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well and it's still expensive it costs 150 US

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dollars this demo was supposed to show how it's easier to line up with the phone hello

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buddy but in spite of these costs and design challenges we still don't think

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there's any excuse I mean we already showed that it costs about two dollars

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to add the power receiving side to a keyboard like the MX mechanical mini so

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that shouldn't increase the price by something like this by more than a couple percent and while this might be a

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little janky even by our standards we built a proof of concept charging pad

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that shouldn't cost more than a hundred bucks at retail we just taped oh there

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it is nine charging coils onto a piece of cardboard and then if you watch we

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just uh put it under one of our stylish

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Northern Lights desk pads hey and the point is this proof of

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concept works I'm great but it works bottom line then

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angry meow makes high quality products but we shouldn't have to rely on a

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premium Niche brand to develop a feature that has been standard in other tech for

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upwards of a decade what is it Logitech what are you afraid of Razer I mean heck

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even Apple should have been on top of this by now legitimately at least this

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is a real question like if you guys know why no one has done this please let us

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know in the comments below if you go ahead and use the DIY option to add

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wireless charging to your keyboard hey let us know how it went in the LTT form

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thread that's Linked In the description perhaps we could use that thread as a

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bit of a repository for others who are seeking out a truly Wireless life one

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idea that I've actually been toying with for a while is embedding the wireless

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charger in the tabletop surface so that I don't have to deal with one of these

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high power through the desk ones and

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then taking my Logitech power play mat and then embedding that like routing out

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the shape of it and embedding that in the surface and then just laying a desk

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mat over the entire thing how stealthy would that be

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stealthy like the same way to response

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I fix it big thanks to them for sponsoring this video tired of

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if you guys like this video maybe check out the time that we used y charge to

00:12:03.959 --> 00:12:10.620
power a toy train it really did seem like Wireless power throughout the room

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was just over the horizon but as far as we can tell they haven't really gone

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anywhere since then